Ashley Beckwith is the founder and CEO of Foray Bioscience, where she and her team leverage plant cell culture to create predictable access to the plants and plant products the world needs, by growing them from the cell up.

Ashley’s path into the world of plants has been a curious one. She holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from MIT and has been innovating at the intersection of biology, materials, and manufacturing for over a decade. Her award-winning Ph.D. research led to the first demonstration of lab-grown “wood”, combining principles of tissue engineering and plant culture to grow structured plant materials in the lab.

Now, Ashley leads Foray’s team of plant biologists, process engineers, software developers, and machine learning experts to make plant cell and tissue culture predictable and accessible for applications from micropropagation to fabricated seed production. 

Trinity Pierce is the Chicago Region Trees Initiative senior stewardship manager at The Morton Arboretum. She collaborates with community organizations and members to increase awareness and foster action through plantings and ongoing care in order to grow a more diverse, more abundant, and more equitably distributed urban forest. A Certified Arborist, she holds a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Michigan with a background in history, ecological restoration, and urban green space reconciliation.